As the UN Turns 75 years of Age During the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Prioritization of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals Has Never Been More Crucial to Ensure a Better Recovery and Build Back Better.

In 2015, World Leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  The 17 SDGs call for action by all countries to promote prosperity while maintaining peace, protecting the planet, the people and building partnerships. With only ten years remaining to achieve these goals, countries are accelerating steps towards ending poverty, fighting inequalities, tackling climate change, and ensuring that no one is left behind.  Every month, the United Nations spotlights one of the 17 SDGs, highlighting its purpose, targets, and criticality in advancing Agenda 2030. This month’s focus is on all the SDGs in light of the 75th Session of the UN General Assembly.

As COVID-19 continues to shake the world, leaders across the globe are under pressure to make bold choices and take bold action, at scale, to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the people and for the planet. The COVID-19 pandemic presents humanity with a unique blank canvas to recover better and build back a world that enables the prosperity of all people and the planet.

This year, the United Nations is commemorating its 75th anniversary amidst great disruption from COVID-19, which has drastically heightened the threat of leaving many people behind. Only the SDGs can provide a way forward to a strong recovery and a better future for all at this time of great uncertainty.

In his address at the 75th session of General Assembly Debate on Friday, His Majesty King Mswati III (represented by the Rt Hon. Prime Minister, H.E. Ambrose Dlamini) challenged world leaders to use this 75th commemoration to critically self-examine and focus on priorities for recovering better from COVID-19. He stated: “It is a reminder to the United Nations to revisit and stick to the ideal that recognizes dignity, prioritizes the value of cooperation and the equal worth of all, leaving no one behind.”

Indeed, with just under 10 years left to achieve the 17 SDGs, the Decade of Action is upon us. Prioritisation of the SDGs and achievement of Agenda 2030 which is founded upon the principle of leaving no one behind are crucial to the recovery of the world after this devastating global pandemic.

As recently stated by the UN Secretary-General, Mr António Guterres, the 17 global goals are designed to be “a blueprint for beating poverty and hunger, confronting the climate crisis, achieving gender equality and much more, within the next ten years.”

On Friday, 18th September, the UN Secretary-General, for the very first time during his term in office, convened the  ‘SDG Moment’ to set a vision for a Decade of Action and recovering better from COVID-19; he provided a snapshot on SDGs progress, as well as plans and actions to tackle implementation gaps on our way to achieve Agenda 2030.

As the UN commemorates its 75th anniversary, the need for global solidarity, increased ambition and action by global leaders to achieve all SDGs cannot be overlooked.

The Secretary-General’s Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 notes in this regard that progress had been made in a few areas such as improvement of maternal and child health, expanded access to electricity and increase in women’s representation in Governments. Yet these advances were offset by growing food insecurity, deterioration of the natural environment, acceleration of climate change, and persistent and pervasive inequalities.

The Report further establishes that, even before the COVID-19 outbreak, progress had been uneven and more focused attention was needed in most areas. The pandemic abruptly disrupted SDGs implementation and, in some cases, is turning back decades of progress. It also vividly demonstrates that the world needs to take more urgent and more ambitious action to get back on track and achieve the SDGs.

According to the Report, Africa is not on track to meet most of the SDGs. Progress is slow or stagnant and, in some cases, regressing. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty in Africa had declined at a much slower pace than in other regions of the world, and the continent was not on track to meet any of the targets of Goal 1 (end poverty in all its forms everywhere). COVID-19 has now put a further brake on the pace of poverty reduction in Africa. Depending on the extent of its impact and its duration, COVID-19 could cut Africa’s average growth from between 1.8 to 2.6 per cent in 2020. (The overall GDP growth in Africa had already slowed down to 3.6 per cent in 2019). According to recent economic forecasts, this contraction in growth could push an additional 24 million women and men in Sub Saharan Africa into extreme poverty. COVID-19 is also likely to result in a sharp rise in food prices and rising hunger and malnutrition.

The African continent was also not on track to meet any of the measured gender-related targets and, for 20 per cent of them (equal access to education, reduction of violence and related death and human trafficking), the trends are deteriorating rather than improving. 31 per cent of women and girls aged 15 to 49 years, who have ever been in a relationship, have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in the previous 12 months; and only 48 per cent of women in sub-Saharan Africa are able to make their own decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Unless a gender perspective is embraced in economic recovery packages, the COVID-19 crisis will lead to even worse outcomes for women, in terms of livelihoods and well-being. Emerging data demonstrates that, since the outbreak of COVID-19, women have been more at risk of intimate partner’s violence and sexual abuse while girls have been more at risk of child marriage and female genital mutilation.

Women are the backbone of African small and medium enterprises and contribute as much as 80 per cent of the region’s employment. In non-agricultural sectors, 58 per cent of the self-employed are women, and 45 per cent of employers are women. Yet women are often in the most vulnerable situations, serving as domestic workers, informal entrepreneurs in urban areas, and agricultural workers in rural areas. They are often left without pay and with limited access to social protection.

Investing in and ensuring meaningful participation of women and girls in productive sectors, particularly the agri-business and agricultural value chains, are essential to overcome gender inequality and to reduce poverty.

Climate change also poses an existential threat to Africa, jeopardizing the attainment of the continent’s development agenda. Nature-based solutions can preserve critical resources for Africa and the planet, while also enhancing livelihoods. In rural areas of Africa, 62 per cent of the population depends directly on ecosystem services for their livelihood.

Economic recovery from COVID-19 should be greener. It should entail scaling up economic activity and productivity, with increased dividends in jobs, inclusiveness, social well-being, climate resilience and natural capital sustainability. Energy is the cornerstone of such an inclusive green recovery. African countries have 22,000 megawatt of planned clean energy actions in their Nationally Determined Contributions on climate change, which represent an investment opportunity of about $40 billion.

Africa's overall internet connectivity remains at 28.2 per cent of the population. In sub-Saharan Africa, the internet penetration rate is about 10 percentage points lower for women than for men. Reliable, affordable digital and physical infrastructure should be made widely accessible to the continent’s two-thirds of the population to achieve sustainable economic growth.

The COVID-19 pandemic will widen Africa’s SDG financing gap and, without intervention, will potentially derail progress towards its achievement. To regain lost momentum and minimize the risk of insolvency, it is critical that more African countries gain access to long term development financing from capital markets at competitive rates.

The 17 SDGs remain our shared vision to end poverty, rescue the planet and build a peaceful world by 2030. 

The Decade of Action is a call to mobilize everyone everywhere, demand urgency and ambition, and supercharge ideas to solutions. It demands global action to secure more resources and smarter solutions for the SDGs; promote local action, efficient institutions and adequate regulatory frameworks; and people action, including by youth, civil society, the media, the private sector, unions, academia and other stakeholders, to generate an unstoppable movement pushing for the required transformations.

Now is the time for real and ambitious change, leveraging the heightened levels of awareness, solidarity and transformative possibility that this crisis has generated. In the words of the UN Secretary-General: “the SDGs are a blueprint for beating poverty and hunger, confronting the climate crisis, achieving gender equality and much more, within the next ten years. At a time of great uncertainty, the SDGs show the way forward to a strong recovery from COVID-19 and a better future for all on a safe and healthy planet.”

At the beginning of 2020, the UN launched the world’s biggest conversation on building a better future for all. Dialogues with different groups, particularly the marginalised ones, were hosted in 87 countries across the globe. 

In Eswatini, the UN75 dialogues started at the commemoration of UN Day in October 2019, continued with more than 300 women from all walks of life in December 2019 and gained momentum in July and August 2020. Dialogues were held with various groups including the media, women, women farmers, business women, children, youths, people living with HIV (PLHIV), people with disabilities, migrants, LGBTQI, artists, as well as Members of Parliament and the Prime Minister.

The UN75 Report has now been released at the General Assembly and demonstrates that, across regions, ages and social groups, respondents were broadly united in their priorities for the future amid the current COVID-19 crisis. The immediate priority for most respondents is improved access to basic services – healthcare, safe water, sanitation and education - followed by greater international solidarity and increased support to those hardest hit by the pandemic. This includes tackling inequalities and rebuilding a more inclusive economy. 

Looking to the future, people are concerned with the climate crisis and the destruction of our natural environment. Other priorities include ensuring greater respect for human rights, settling conflicts, tackling poverty and reducing corruption. 

Eswatini is privileged to serve as one of the Vice Presidents of this 75th session of the General Assembly for a period of one year; this prestigious and unique position will give the Kingdom an opportunity to contribute to solutions towards shaping the future.

As the United Nations Development System in Eswatini prepares to support the people and the Government of Eswatini for the next cycle 2021-2025 through the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework, greater emphasis will be placed on supporting the Kingdom of Eswatini recover better from COVID-19 and accelerating the achievement of the SDGs in the country.